


Closer

by thebrightestbird



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: Civil War, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3891559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebrightestbird/pseuds/thebrightestbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky have a second chance to get closer than ever before.</p>
<p>Takes place during "Captain America: Civil War," so spoilers for the rumors about Bucky's part in the plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closer

**Author's Note:**

> This is my wishful thinking for Cap 3. I know, I know. We'll be lucky if we get even a handshake between these two in the next movie.

“Stark wants my head.”

“He’s not going to get it. There’s got to be a way to make Tony see reason.”

Bucky scoffs. “He’s right. I deserve to be executed. Or worse.”

“No!” Steve shouts. “Don’t think that way. You were a prisoner of Hydra for 70 years. You were forced.” He pauses to collect himself. “Forget Tony for now. _You_ need to start understanding what you’ve been through. They took your freewill, Buck. You didn’t know you could or should fight the handlers.”

Bucky seems to shrink himself, leaning on the back of the couch and hunching, looking at the floor. “Every time they woke me, I would look at all of the faces, some of them the same just with more wrinkles, and I would know there is something terrible about them all. But they were all I was allowed to know. So I just assumed this is the nature of the world now. Ominous and brutal. I honestly thought there was nothing more. The missions, the murders … so what? Why try to be good when everything is bad?”

Steve leans next to Bucky on the couch. “That proves my point. You really didn’t know there were any other choices.”

Bucky’s hair is curtaining his face, still staring down. Steve brings a hand to his head and turns him. “Buck, look at me.”

He does with little resistance. Obeying Steve’s commands is pretty much muscle memory.

“If you feel any responsibility for what you were _forced_ to do, then that’s your business. You should be allowed to deal and atone with it in your way. But you definitely don’t deserve ‘execution or worse.’ ”

Steve bumps his forehead against Bucky’s, and they close their eyes, absorbing everything that’s been said. Bucky opens his eyes first, letting himself get reacquainted with the features of his best friend’s face. He doesn’t remember everything, but this face is so unchanged and lodged in Bucky’s mind that it helped break through decades of brainwashing.

It’s a good face, and Bucky’s hit with the urge to get closer than ever to it.

Steve feels the change in movement and opens his eyes. “Buck?” Steve tries to pull his head back a bit, but Bucky had grabbed the back of his neck and isn’t letting go. “What’s going on?”

“We were close, right?” Bucky asks, mostly rhetorically. “We were close but never closer?”

“We were best friends. How much closer could we …” Steve trails off, losing his train of thought while looking into Bucky’s grayish-blue eyes. Being so physically close to Bucky is doing something to Steve he can’t quite pin down. His heart’s racing, he feels lightheaded. Bucky’s warm and solid and alive under his hand.

Steve gets off the couch and gives them breathing space. “Bucky, we never were anything but friends. The possibility never entered my mind back then, and I doubt it ever entered yours.”

“How do you know?” Bucky asks defiantly.

“You would’ve told me.”

“Back then, Steve? I was too smart to risk it. But right now? I guess I could blame the decades of mind control, but I’m dumb enough to try for more.”

Steve looks at him at an utter loss for words.

Bucky gets off the couch to get in Steve’s space. “I want us to be friends again,” he continues. “But we have a second chance to be even closer than that.”

Bucky seems to have exhausted his words. To truly get his point across, he clasps his flesh-and-blood hand with Steve’s, fully intertwining their fingers. Even as kids, the two had never really held hands. Sure, Bucky would grab hold of Steve’s hand to drag him some place, sometimes swing an arm around his shoulders, but full-on hand-holding just never happened.

Steve realizes what a severe oversight this was because holding Bucky’s hand is a revelation. The simple intimacy sparks something in him. He can’t deny anymore that he wants what Bucky wants. To get closer.

That’s when Natasha opens the door.

Bucky’s quick to react, shoving Steve so hard that he ends up six feet away on his ass.

“Guys, we need a game plan to keep Tony at bay. He’s going to come knocking hard soon.” She looks up from her phone and notices Steve’s peculiar position on the floor.

“At least Tony’ll be polite enough to _knock_ ,” Bucky says, glaring at Natasha. “Unlike some people.”

Natasha arches an eyebrow and assesses the situation. Her mouth forms a silent “o.” “You know what? I can see you two are busy. I’ll come up with something to delay Tony.” She looks at Steve, who seems to think remaining on the floor makes him invisible. “No worries,” Natasha tries to reassure him. “Pretend I was never here.”

She gives Steve a small smile and a wink before turning and leaving as suddenly as she came in. Steve has to roll his eyes at her.

When she’s out the door, the silence hits the men like bricks. “Um, I guess I’ll just go to bed,” Bucky says with a heavy sigh. Figuring his chance is lost, he tries to give Steve an easy out. “You should probably check on Natalia. There’s no telling what she’s planning.”

But Steve just stares at Bucky from the floor. He stares and stares until he finally comes to a decision. Leaping up and taking three easy strides, he grabs Bucky’s shirt to pull him into a kiss.

It’s a relief, this kiss. A dam breaking, pressure being released, conditions with which Steve had no idea he was afflicted. How could Bucky and he not know they were holding back so much from each other?

The kiss lasts for quite a while. Closer is just not close enough. When they part to breathe, they keep their foreheads together like earlier. Steve can’t help but give Bucky a dopey smile, and Bucky returns it for a few seconds before turning serious.

“Steve, I want you to know that whatever happens after this, with Stark or the Hydra goons or whatever, I just want you to know that none of it will matter.”

“Of course, it’ll matter. No one’s doing anything with you.”

“Steve, just … this is all that matters. That we got this chance. I don’t know if we would have gotten to this point back then. We might not have. We’re stubborn. But now I can face whatever happens with some kind of peace.”

“You talk like you’re going to do this all alone.”

Bucky shakes his head. “You can’t risk everything you’ve built and earned in this future for me.”

“Well, Buck, you pretty much ruined that already because you started something new just now with me. You might not remember too well, but you and I … we start what we finish.”

Bucky looks up at him dubiously. “Is that so?”

“Afraid so,” Steve answers, looking at Bucky with heat and intent. “Like you said, we’re stubborn.”

Steve leans in and kisses Bucky again. The desire and reassurance he pours into the act is making Bucky woozy. He could almost start to believe they can have this. That it will last.

Steve breaks away to speak again, hushed but with conviction. “I know the things that are coming for us are going to be tough. But we’re going to get through it.”

Steve suddenly hugs Bucky, and it’s strange, but this closeness seems somehow more intimate than the kisses. “Together, Buck. We’ll face it all together.”

Bucky squeezes Steve hard and buries his face in Steve’s neck. Bucky knows he’s right. They’ll be together for whatever is to come. They’re closer than ever at this very moment.

Till death do us part.


End file.
